410 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



the tree to form fruit buds. A tree very badly injured may leaf out ia 

 the spring, bloom very full, may half mature the fruit and die. Then most 

 people are ready to say that the tree bore itself to death, when the death- 

 blow that nearly killed it outrighffell months before. 



How to Make Trees Bear.— Apple trees six years old or over that do 

 not bear nor develop fruit buds may have their growth checked. Watch 

 the progress of the tree. After the leaves are fully grown is the time to 

 check the growth to cause the formation of fruit buds. Different modes 

 are practiced: Twisting a small wire tightly around the limbs, which 

 must be removed in about six weeks; girdling by cutting or peeling a band 

 of bark off one or two inches wide; pruning; stopping cultivation, or sow- 

 ing to clover. The same applies to peach, pear, cherry or plum trees. 

 I have seen peach buds form in the spring, but this is a rare case. 



How to Grow Fruit for Exhibition. — When fruit is about one-third 

 grown select limbs that have the best fruit. Pick off all except two or 

 three specimens— only one is better. Twist a wire around the limb just 

 below the fruit. This checks the downward flow of sap by pressing the 

 bark, throwing the food back and the fruit appropriates it, causing an 

 abnormal growth and speedy maturity. This may seem unreasonable, 

 but trees take in their food from the soil — minerals dissolved in water— 

 which passes from cell to cell through the center of the trees until its 

 leaves are reached, where it is digested, so to speak, and is combmed with 

 carbon from the atmosphere, and the sap food passes downward imme- 

 diately under the bark, building up the wood cells and nourishing the 

 fruit. — Exchange. 



CROSS POLLINATION OF ORCHARD FRUITS. 



Although the theory of the importance of having some of our orchard 

 fruit crossed in the blossom from the blooms of other varieties of the same 

 species, to obtain better crops or better fruits, was not propounded very 

 long ago, it has attracted much attention, and has been generally adopted 

 by the leading horticulturists, because it gives a reasonable explanation of 

 many problems that have been more or less difficult of explanation before. 



When a man planted a commercial orchard of one variety that he 

 thought to be productive and in good demand in the market, he could not 

 understand why his trees should not yield as well as those of his neigh- 

 bor, who had the same kind in a little orchard of a half-dozen vai-ieties, 

 intended more for home use than for market. When a tree bore a good 

 crop on one side and set no fruit from an equally good bloom on the other, 

 it was not easy to assign a reason for it, and when two scions from the 

 same tree were set upon similar stocks of bearing trees in different or- 

 chards, and varied much in quality or amount of fruit, it seemed unac- 

 countable as it did when an old orchard had all but one or two favorite 

 ones cut down or dug out, that the trees left should cease to be productive. 



